We Are Not Continuity, We Are Rupture / Miriam Celaya

Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel, Ramón Machado Ventura and Ramiro Valdés (photo: rtve.es)

Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, West Palm Beach, United States, 2 August 2019 —  On July 30th, the digital edition of the Granma newspaper published yet another of the usual hodge-podge stew texts we are so used to, in which the term “mercenary” (through Wikipedia), the crisis of Venezuela, the Helms-Burton Act in its Third Chapter, the recent report on Venezuela prepared by Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which the autocrats of the Palace of the Revolution have found so hard to swallow, and – finally as a main course – the “stateless” in Cuba who, “by vocation” and even for chump change (…) lend themselves to any shady deal against the country that saw them draw their first breath”.

This time the official regurgitation would be perfectly inconsequential, except for its timing, in the midst of a true offensive against independent journalism and autonomous groups of the civil society.  Also, by the prosaic manipulation of facts and terms with the sole purpose of conditioning public opinion in favor of an eventual raid against all public action that they deem adverse, it is punctually directed against the “traitors, stateless and ill-born mercenaries”, who have had the inexcusable audacity of exercising their legitimate right to request the presence of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and its observers in Cuba, as well as the preparation of the corresponding report. continue reading

In this regard, and putting aside the fact that Cuba is a UN member country, the Castro scribe says “that these reports come with the script and writing of the US Department of State and it is worth noting that all these infamies have crashed against Cuba in the presence of truth (…) and with the dignity of a whole people that knows how to identify, fight and defeat its enemies, be they internal or external ”.

Because the Plaza de la Revolución has an instrumental and bipolar vision of the international organizations to which it belongs: they are legitimate if they condemn the Embargo (“blockade”, as they call it), but they are spurious if they denounce the excesses of Castro’s power or that of their allies.

But not because it’s overused is the official strategy less perverse, especially when all the setbacks suffered in recent times by the cream of the crop of regional progress -today almost folded into Havana’s Palace of the Revolution and the Palace of Miraflores in Caracas -is added “the betrayal” of someone who was assumed until the day before, and not without foundation, to be a reliable ally, tolerant of the dictatorial excesses of her leftist friends, socialist Michelle Bachelet. Good times are definitely not here for the Castro regime’s “progressive” millionaires, and they prepare to defend their power, their lair and their privileges with equal intensity.

Thus, although neither the international organizations attached to the United Nations nor Bachelet herself in her years as President of Chile have ever given due attention to the demands of Cuban civil society and to allegations of human rights violations in Cuba, the dictatorship prefers to shield itself inward, just in case. And since the elders of the Historical Generation are running out of health or biological time to continue to face displeasure or to fight “battles” — even less so now that the adversaries are the current generations of Cubans who have taken the pleasure of feeling like citizens and not plantation slaves — their beneficiaries and scribes have the sacred mission of stepping out.

They are, paraphrasing Granma’s servile scribe, the true mercenaries of vocation (himself included). Or perhaps it is more accurate to call them insignificant low-cost mercenary slaves. It is they who function as verbal minions against Cubans who, for dignity and for their love of Cuba, have the courage to rebel against the dictatorship, it is they who bark “emboldened” because they feel protected by the landlord, they are also the ones that live on crumbs and “sell their soul to the devil” for travel and small perks and those who “lend themselves to the most vile actions against their fellow citizens.” If it were not for the poison he extracts and the danger that he contains, we almost would have to thank the reporter for the accuracy of the self-portrait.

And it is not that too many expectations need to be made about an eventual (and practically unlikely) incursion of the UN High Commissioner in Cuba, starting with one insurmountable obstacle, the dictatorship would not allow it. But the initiative is worthwhile, not only because Bachelet’s functions include attending to the claims of those who have been systematically violating basic human rights for 60 years, but because every civic front in Cuba undermines the foundations of totalitarianism, and sets precedents for the civic rebirth of Cubans.

The Scribe lord, mercenary slave of the Granma libel, does not understand, and neither do his masters understand that those of us who signed that letter that so much frightens them are not traitors or stateless, but quite the opposite. They do not understand, in their infinite stubbornness, that more and more Cubans than they can imagine are not “we are continuity”.  We are rupture.

Translated by Norma Whiting

Ricky Left to the Rhythm of Reggaeton

Protesters celebrate the resignation of Ricardo Rosselló. (14ymedio / Juan Jaramillo)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 27 July 2019 — “He had to go and he left.” With these words the taxi driver welcomes me. No name or details are necessary, because in the streets of Puerto Rico everyone knows who he’s talking about. While driving through San Juan, the driver tells me how “people tossed out” Governor Ricardo Rosselló after days of protests, in which outrage and reggaeton shook hands.

At a traffic light, the driver, in his 50s, hits the steering wheel with gnarled hands as if it were Ricky’s face. “He didn’t want to leave, but he had to step down,” he insists. Along with his two children, the driver spent every night of last week around La Fortaleza, the official residence of the Puerto Rican governor. “I carried a flag, but in black and white, without colors, because here we are still in mourning,” he says.

While he tells me the details of the nights of protest, we pass through several blocks where balcony after balcony and door after door display the flag with the blue triangle and red stripes one after another. A banner so similar to the Cuban flag that in my fantasies of the recently arrived, I imagine being in Havana the day after a change of government. continue reading

This confusion of realities haunts me as the car heads towards old San Juan. So when the driver says “people joined together and it didn’t matter if you were an artist or a mechanic, rich or poor, everyone was together,” I fantasize about some workers who drop their picks and shovels on the railroad line to shout in chorus with novelists and troubadours in front of Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution.

The image lasts in my head for a second before I return to Puerto Rico.

Hurricane Maria is an open wound that crosses the Island. “My brother lost everything and had to move from the town where he lived, spent a year and a half without electricity,” says the taxi driver. Interposing some words in English: babyexpensivedealerfood… a linguistic mix that I hear everywhere in this free state associated with the United States.

Evening falls, headlines around the world point to this place where in the plazas twerking people celebrate the first day without Ricky, the beginning of a new stage, filled with questions. In one of those places, where popular joy, alcohol and hip movements mix, is Alder, a musician who plays the piano and the clarinet. He also dances, but with some care.

“I had sciatica problems last year and I don’t want to be in a wheelchair again but I couldn’t miss this,” he tells me as he glugs down a bottle of a craft beer made by friends. “These are not gone, they remained after the crisis and the hurricane, they are still here,” he says, pointing to the label “one hundred percent Puerto Rican.” Every time he tries to twerk he puts a hand on his waist, “to not do it too hard,” he says.

Beside him, a family has come with two darling and barking mutts, collected from the shelters where they left them when they fled from the hurricane to their families in the United States, who took them in that fateful September 2017. The winds and rains took then more than 4,600 lives, according to a study by Harvard University.

“It was hard because we had to go back to our origins, learn to do things that we hadn’t done for years,” says Nata, a Puerto Rican who has come out to celebrate with her two rescued pets. “There were people here who didn’t know how to live without air conditioning, without their cell phones or without electricity and ‘Maria’ forced us to learn from scratch,” she recalls.

“After that, the telephones did not work so people were in the street. In the villages they had to improvise common pots to feed themselves and the citizenry had to organize themselves to deal with the disaster,” she says. “This all started with ‘Maria’. Without what happened to us two years ago people would not have ended up mobilizing as they have done now, they would not have ended up uniting.”

The tipping point was the recent leak of a chat of almost 900 pages in which Rosselló shared with his close collaborators, his “brothers”, as he called them, hundreds, thousands, of opinions, comments and public policy issues. Sexual jokes and misogynistic jokes also dot the extensive exchange in the Telegram app that ended up sinking his Government.

But the rejection was incubated long before. “This is a rich boy, he doesn’t know what’s going on down here,” says a very thin man on the outskirts of a club that has been closed for more than a year. “He is the son of former Governor Pedro Rosselló González, so he has always had a good life without difficulties,” he explains and heads to a place where, on a rickety sofa, several drug addicts have a peaceful space to inject.

The musicians have been protagonists of the social movement that brought down Rosselló. The voices of Bad Bunny, Residente and Ricky Martin act as a soundtrack to social dissatisfaction and, at the bus stops, young people with wireless speakers blast their rhymes. You can go from one side of the city to the other completing the songs with the snippets that emerge from cars, windows and the voices of Puerto Ricans themselves.

Several phrases call for independence, for taking advantage of the situation to “go beyond and end the colony,” as a young man demands outside a small house near La Puerta de Alto del Cabro bar, a traditional site that has managed to survive despite the onslaught of the big chains. But it is the rejection of Rosselló, the villain of the day, which everyone seems to share.

Alder waited all Wednesday afternoon for Ricky to leave. In the musical studio where he recorded some songs, they stuffed themselves with popcorn, drinks and patience to celebrate the governor’s departure. After seven o’clock in the evening their supplies had run out and “the bastard still did not resign,” he recalls. It was like watching the end of a movie that goes on and on without the credits appearing.

An hour later, they decided to go to the outskirts of La Fortaleza. “It may take time but tonight he’s going, no matter what,” said Adler. In the early morning, he ended up on the bench of a drunk and happy park as if he had been part of the “liberating command” that removed the governor from his post. There was no one on the street who did not feel part of that group as well. They did not need balaclavas or machine guns, they did it with shouts.

Exhaustion and so many impressions mix up everything in my head. I grew up hearing about the two wings, that it is only together that the islands can take flight. Dawn arrives, and on the other “half of the bird” just a few hours remain before Cuba’s official 26th of July event.

Here, Puerto Ricans exercise their civic force against power, and there, Cubans attend the liturgy of immobility, the worn out ceremony of “continuity,” the motto most repeated by Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel to prolong what has already lasted too long. Here they talk and unite, there we shut up and fear. On the same morning, San Juan is a party and Havana a tomb.

Harry drives an Uber for ten hours a day, his real estate business was ruined by the hurricane. Every person I meet has a before and after ‘Maria’. Just mentioning that name makes people emotional, exploding in an avalanche of anecdotes. “I should have left, because a brother of mine who lives in New York was going to help me get settled there, but I didn’t want to leave my parents alone,” he says.

One day after the governor’s resignation the graffiti on the streets continue to recall the long days of demands. (14ymedio)

Skeptical about Roselló’s departure, Harry is one of the few who has not gone to demonstrate or celebrate after the governor’s resignation. “It doesn’t matter, a corrupt one leaves and another arrives,” he says. “Whoever comes will also steal,” he says categorically as we head for Ocean Park in Santurce. A black cloth whips loudly back and forth on a flagpole. “Ricky resign,” it says in huge white letters.

The vehicle turns the corner, passes a Walgreens pharmacy, a McDonald’s and a KFC. Throughout the neighborhood, local businesses try to maintain themselves in the presence of large firms that “sell cheaper and cheaper,” Harry tells me. “Young people prefer to eat a hamburger over a fricasé,” he laments.

Harry has been very worried since Wednesday, when Rosselló announced that he was leaving. “I live from tourism and the people who come here to do business. If they see us as an unstable or unsafe country, they won’t come,” he calculates. He proposes a trip to and from the beach for a good price, but then immediately realizes that I come from an Island; “ah … true you also have enough sun over there,” he says.

I arrive at Río Piedras, where time seems to have stopped. The once populous boulevard is now a street with few businesses and abandoned buildings. A store displays its Made in China merchandise on the sidewalk. Walking, I come across a cart that sells honey, lemon and ginger. I need them because my throat is sore from the Havana rain and the Puerto Rican revelry. I take advantage of the shade and approach the merchant.

“This was full of life before,” he says. Several cats come out of the abandoned house behind me. One, black as night, rubs against my legs to get me to give him something to eat. I cross the street and buy a corn fritter from a woman who has her little post at the entrance to a cafeteria. A recorded voice constantly repeats the list of sales “today only.”

In Río Piedras, near the University of Puerto Rico, people got tired of waiting. A coffee seller evokes the 1996 gas explosion in the Humberto Vidal store that left 33 dead and an indelible mark in the memory of the community. “Afterwards everything went from bad to worse,” he tells me and gives me a cup with a strong and bitter liquid that makes my eyes cross. “We didn’t have to fire a shot and Ricky left,” he boasts.

If it weren’t for a few details of the accent and because the coffee has no hint of roasted peas, I would think I was conversing with any Cuban in a town in the interior of the country. He smooths his hair with hand, raises his index finger and predicts that “already Puerto Ricans are not the same as before, now we know we are strong, that we must respect ourselves.”

Across the street, a Colombian underwear store exhibits bras with lace. “So Cuban,” says the man. I make a move to leave because I suspect that he will repeat stereotypes about my island, the other wing, a wing with its own wounds. I sense that he will recite to me “the conquests of the Revolution,” but I am wrong. “You don’t have this,” he emphasizes with a hint of superiority. “At least we have started along the road.”

I turn to give the cat something to eat but it is gone. The building where it came from smells of abandonment, of that humidity that is encrusted in the walls when people stop inhabiting a place. A nearby graffiti demands that Ricky step down and in the corner a tattered flag beats against a balcony. I squint my eyes and my tiredness or the heat make me see blue stripes instead of red stripes next to a triangle, blood red.

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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.

Between “Collateral Damage” and Direct Damage”

New technologies have not only facilitated the emergence and proliferation of sites of undeniable quality and variety in Cuba, and their disappearance would certainly be an important loss of spaces rigorously attained. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Miriam Celaya, West Palm Beach, 23 July 2019 — Journalist José Jasán Nieves, general editor of El Toque, is the author of an article published last Sunday in which he exposes his particular vision about the difficulties of the new Cuban journalism in order to survive official pressures and obstacles, while noting that what he considers the Government’s current repressive escalation (though he doesn’t call it that) against the “alternative press” is the “confrontational focus” of Donald Trump’s policy against Cuba.

J.J. Nieves defines as “new journalism” what has emerged in Cuba in the last seven years outside the official press monopoly, endorsed in more than thirty websites which – “supported by the expansion of access to digital technologies, internet, and new forms of financing from the small private sector” – made it possible that “Cuba’s story” to cease to be “bi-chromatic (for or against the socialist model)” and to acquire “the same complexity as (.. .) the society in transition in this archipelago in the Caribbean Sea”.

The author mentions the participation of young professionals, graduates of Cuban universities, many of them with experience in the official press, as a factor that has elevated the quality of journalism. Another favorable factor for the rise of this new journalism is what he considers a “climate of greater tolerance towards dissent in the political sphere,” aided by the spirit of detente that led to the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the US government and Cuba in the Obama era, and “towards emerging forms of civil society” (said to have been promoted by the “updating of the model” speech) and by Raúl Castro’s economic reforms implemented since 2011. continue reading

The author mentions the participation of young professionals, graduates of Cuban universities, many of them with experience in the official press, as a factor that has increased the quality of journalism

However, despite the fact that the “new journalism” distances itself from the poles or “factions” – “no longer the hell of a repressive dictatorship or the idyllic fantasy of the lighthouse country and guide of the international left” – and that its contents “better satisfy the information needs of the people”, Nieves complains that he is considered by the current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, as the new subversion, which is “the clearest confirmation of an approach already applied to him by the security organs of the Cuban State since his first editions.” It seems as if the author naively considers the repressive bodies as an entity independent of the Government.

In keeping with the discourse of the same power that suffocates both the “faction” of those who speak of a repressive dictatorship and the new and conciliatory journalism, for Nieves, the great villain of this story is Donald Trump with his policy of confrontation towards Cuba. It is the American president, and not the lack of political will on the part of the Cuban Government, which “can end at once the permissiveness towards the also termed  “alternative press.”

There are many of us who do independent journalism and do not accept agendas dictated from abroad, nor do we share at all the confrontational policies of Mr. Trump or previous presidents, although we are not remiss when it comes to labeling the Cuban government as “a dictatorial regime”, just as it is, which does not include us in any faction. Instead, to label ourselves as such would be to follow the official agenda of Castroism.

The writing contains some “small” omissions, such as the fact that, like it or not, there is a long history of previous independent journalism in which many activists and professional journalists, like Reinaldo Escobar or Raúl Rivero – which cost the latter jail time during the incursion of the Black Spring – who many years ago assumed the responsibility of describing Cuba as complex and concealed (not necessarily “bi-chromatic”) in a way that never appears in the official media. It also ignores that media – such as 14ymedio or Diario de Cuba, to name two known cases – not only have their access blocked from the Island, but are also not included in “el paquete”*. That is why it is appropriate to remind Nieves that all journalism has the right to exist and that it should belong to Cubans, and not to a select elite of well-intentioned university professionals or an almighty political power to choose what type of press they should taste.

The text contains some “small” omissions such as the fact that, like it or not, there is a long history of independent journalism

 At any rate, new technologies have not only eased the emergence and proliferation of sites of undeniable quality and variety in Cuba, whose disappearance would certainly be a significant loss of hard-earned spaces and a very painful setback in terms of civic freedoms, but also the possibility of turning any citizen into a journalist who narrates his own reality, his problems, his demands and aspirations, from his community, a variant of journalism that emerged decades ago around the world and that, with its lights and shadows, has been present in Cuba.

It should be noted, however, that José Jasán Nieves’s article could be an important contribution to a long-held debate around Cuban independent journalism – understood as independent of the most holy State-Party-Government trinity – call it new, alternative, or any denomination, whose existence and character has been questioned by both Tyrians and Trojans, and that, in short, has suffered harassment and repression in its entirety from the same common enemy, which is not exactly imperialism.

If there is one thing all us factions – those who dedicate themselves to the dangerous profession of dissenting or, at least, questioning a reality that depends exclusively on the designs of the caste that holds the political power in Cuba – is that the causes of our prolonged National crisis and the threat of extinction of our free journalism spaces are within Cuba and not in the policies dictated by a foreign power, whatever it may be, as was demonstrated during Obama’s conciliatory agenda or with the worsening pressures from Trump.

If Nieves prefers to assume the current incursion against independent journalism as Trump’s “collateral damage”, and if that makes him feel any better, it will be beneficial.  For my part, as an independent journalist and as a citizen, I choose to continue fighting against the direct damage to all our freedoms, which has been (and continues to be) the one that originates from the Palace of the Revolution.

*El Paquete (the package) is a one terabyte collection of digital material distributed since around 2008 in Cuba’s underground market as a substitute for broadband Internet.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.

Mystery Solved: Why Cubans Call Buses “Guagua”

The word “guagua,” which for Cubans means bus, comes from the English Wa & Wa Co. Inc (Washington, Walton, and Company Incorporated) which was the first United States factory to export buses to the island. The logo of Wa&Wa Co. Inc. was a white blue and red hare, colors of the American flag, and figured prominently on the front, back and sides of their buses.

Additional notes: The closest English approximation of the sound of the Cuban word “guagua” is “wawa.” 

Source: Eagle eyed translator Norma Whiting.  Thanks Norma!

We are on the new host

7 July 2019

Dear Readers: As you may have noticed we’ve had some problems with our site recently so we  moved to a new hosting company to try to ensure these problems don’t continue. There still may be some glitches to iron out.

Karen wants us to give a shout out to Hosting Matters for being a terrific hosting company with super-responsive support and nice people.  She uses them for many of her other sites so she’s had a long time to insure they are good folks and will do a good job keeping Translating Cuba up and running.

Although – like we said – there could still be a few glitches here and there as we shake down.  This is a very complicated site with lots of custom programming.

Fuenteovejuna: Lessons of a Leaderless March

Havana’s LGBTI Community carries out an independent march in favor of sexual diversity (Archival photo)

Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 20 May 2019 — Echoes of the peaceful independent march carried out last May 11th by Cuban LGBTI activists in Havana’s Central Park and along the Paseo del Prado, continue to move social networks with mostly messages of support and solidarity towards this historically victimized community, which has been discriminated against, and also – unfortunately – with the repression that was unleashed against the protesters during and after the event.

We must recognize the courage and determination demonstrated both by the LGBTI in claiming their spaces, their identity and their rights, as well as other activists of the independent civil society that participated in the act in demonstration of solidarity and support.

Numerous have been the voices that have denounced the violence of the repression, reflected in the abundant graphic evidence provided by participants, press reporters and eyewitnesses, but despite the unjustifiable use of brute force, beatings and arrests against peaceful demonstrators, who only fostered messages of love and inclusion, the truth is that the march can be considered a success for the Cuban LGBTI movement and, by extension, for the entire civil society. continue reading

To objectively analyze the facts and understand the scope of a march that, in any other geographical context could be considered insignificant, it is necessary to divest the criteria of any prejudice or sexist, political-ideological or sectarian atavism. The ability to call and carry out an independent march in Cuba, in defiance of official regulations and without waiting for “permission” from the autocracy and its officials, constitutes a demonstration of legitimate citizenship on the part of a group of Cubans, beyond conditions and labels, which we should all celebrate and support, especially those who, from the time of the dissidence, are committed to the triumph of democracy.

Freedom of demonstration, then, should be understood as everyone’s right, not as a the property of anyone or any group, so that it would be healthy to abandon any hint of elitism, pedigree or “droit du seigneur”* and to ponder the facts for what was done, not for what some believe should have been done or said, which attitude – on the other hand – is typical of the Power that oppresses us all.

Some have criticized the demonstrators for not raising explicitly anti-government slogans – and needless to say that any movement, thought, or independent demonstration in Cuba is implicitly anti-dictatorial – or have reproached others for supporting the LGBTI march and (allegedly) “not showing solidarity” with some opposition groups. Fortunately, this reluctance to recognize the merit of the effort of others is a minority position.

A first relevant and peculiar element of the LGBTI march of May 11th is that it was not organized by a subject or by a personal leadership, but that it was developed in social networks from a group of activists that freely and spontaneously decided to express their determination to defend their rights to demonstrate peacefully in public spaces.

At this point, the effectiveness of social networks intelligently used for these purposes was demonstrated, even in a country where connections are precarious and excessively expensive in relation to income. Will and technology allied themselves, and the march was possible: an important lesson for all civic movement of these times.

At the same time, the “collective leadership” not only guaranteed the performance of the act by avoiding the usual limelight or egocentrism – which have caused so much harm to other civil movements and opponents in Cuba – but it also won the solidarity of other openly anti-government activists who demonstrated the respect and ethical stature of participating in it without trying to hijack the demonstration in favor of their own agendas or in pursuit of personal glory.

The horizontal perception of leadership, moreover, constitutes a strength because it dislodges the illogical traditional sense of the repressor, also accustomed to a strong vertical leadership in its own command structures. A collective leadership, on the other hand, has the advantage of relatively limiting the disarticulating and demoralizing effect of the political police in sectors of the independent civil society, since there is no individual or “ringleader” – as is usually referred to – to be located as mobilizing leader or generator of actions and proposals, whose movements can be constantly monitored or simply canceled, thus, the capacity of existence and growth of the independent group, the speed of organization of its actions, and the visibility of its proposals are enhanced .

It was not by coincidence that on May 11th, among the first detainees who were beaten by the repressive forces, were several well-known dissident activists – to whom, perhaps initially, the direction of the demonstration was mistakenly attributed – and it is not fortuitous that in the days following the march and until the moment in which this column was written, operatives and arrests have been carried out in the typical style of “kidnapping” of several participants, whose testimonies agree that their interrogators have insisted on the same recurrent point: “who organized the march?” “who is responsible?” Obviously, the regime needs a scapegoat and, most likely, in its absence, they will contrive one.

The concern and powerlessness of the Power are evident, and not only is such a disproportionate repressive effort against the managers of a demonstration perceived that, paradoxically and according to Mrs. Mariela Castro as the “maximum leader” of Cenesex, was tiny and did not represent anyone. The Roundtable, on Cuban TV on Monday, May 13th, in whose panel Mrs. Castro took part, devoted a not inconsiderable segment of its time on screen to disqualifying and trying to discredit both the march and its participants, a common practice of the regime, one which is increasingly less and less effective.

Without the slightest embarrassment, the members of the television panel lied about alleged funding received from the U.S. by the imaginary leaders of the march – although they conveniently omitted the financing that Cenesex receives from abroad – while they tried to minimize the number of participants and to distort the objective of the march.

Same as always, but different in that essential element: the regime desperately needs a guilty party, and a week after “the crime” the responsible party has still not appeared.

A little in jest, but very seriously, the situation evokes that piece by the famous Spanish Golden Age playwright, Lope de Vega, entitled Fuenteovejuna, in which peasants of that imaginary town assumed the collective responsibility for a revolt that ended the life of its abusive Knight Commander of the Military Order. Do the repressors want to know who organized the May 11th march? It was Fuenteovejuna. However, it is prudent to avoid anticipated triumphs, because the truth is that the Cuban dictatorship will definitively lose the game at the moment when all Cubans who aspire to live in freedom and democracy put aside our differences and we become exactly that: Fuenteovejuna.

*droit du seigneur: a feudal lord’s right to bed a servant girl

Translated by Norma Whiting

Cuba Establishes Priorities so as Not to Return to the Crisis of the “Special Period”

Shortages of food have made the daily routine difficult for Cubans who now have to stand in long lines to buy it. (14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerEFE, via 14ymedio, Havana, 14 April 2019 – Given the renewed pressure from the from United States and the inefficiency of its economy, Cuba established “clear” priorities in a plan looking ahead to 2030 to avoid at all cost falling into a serious crisis like that of the so-called “Special Period” in the decade of the 1990s, according to president Miguel Díaz-Canel.

The harshness of the moment requires us to establish clear and well-defined priorities, so as not to return to the difficult times of the ‘Special Period’,” said Díaz-Canel at the end of an extraordinary session of the National Assembly, which, this week, approved the new Constitution.

The leader, who will complete his first year as Head of State this coming Friday, recognizes that the Island still bears “the weight of administrative inefficiency, import mentality, lack of savings and insufficient income from exports.”

“We cannot exclude the manifestations of corruption and illegalities, unacceptable in the Revolution,” he added, outlining two absolute priorities: preparation for defense and the economic battle.

The priorities will be tourism, biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industry, renewable energy sources, food production, and construction, along with the export of professional services which analysts believe to be the country’s main source of income.

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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.

Venezuela Now Has Imported Blackouts / Ciro Diaz

This video is under two minutes long. Originally posted in 2012, we reposted it in 2014 given what was happening in Venezuela. It seems even more prescient now, in 2019, so here it is again.
The subtitles appear to have stopped working.  Here are the lyrics:

IMPORTED BLACKOUTS – An original song by Ciro Diaz

Ohhh…. Fucking up a little island is nothing
Anyone can fuck up a little island
With few natural resources it was easy, to drown it in misery
But Fidel Castro loves the hardest efforts
That’s why he made friends with Chavez
To see if he could fuck up Venezuela

It looked like it would be hard
Because every time they dug a hole
They found every imaginable mineral
And the oil never stopped gushing

Only a president truly idiotic
Would allow his plans to embrace
The foolish ideas of Fidel and Cuban counter-intelligence.
And just like that ten years later, the job seems to be completed

Venezuela now has blackouts, blackouts imported from Havana
Venezuela now has blackouts, our experience was useless to them
Venezuela now has blackouts, blackouts imported from Havana
Venezuela now has blackouts, if they don’t hurry they will be left with nothing.

‘The New York Times’ Responds to Díaz-Canel on Cuban Doctors in Venezuela

‘The New York Times’ responded to Miguel Diaz-Canel on Twitter, insisting that it backs the report published by its reporter Nicholas Casey. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, 19 March 2019 — The Cuban government harshly criticized a report published Sunday in The New York Times where 16 Cuban doctors spoke about how they were used in Venezuela to pressure patients and push them to vote for Nicolás Maduro in the May 2018 elections.

Miguel Diaz-Canel published a tweet Tuesday where he asserted that Cuban doctors “can never be defamed.”

Cuban doctors can never be defamed. Their
extraordinary humane work in lands that the empire calls “dark 
corners of the world,” belie the #NYT and its reporter Casey. 
Feeding Marco Rubio’s war of hatred against #Cuba and #Venezuela is a crime. #SomosCuba  pic.twitter.com/AX5TIjLpID

– Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) March 19, 2019

The New York Times responded to the president on Twitter, claiming that they support the article published by their reporter Nicholas Casey. “This type of rigorous journalism is the core of our work,” insisted the New York newspaper. continue reading

In addition, The New York Times  published another tweet reminding Díaz-Canel that the report contained the stories of 16 Cuban doctors who had left the island’s missions “who described a system of political manipulation in which their services were used to obtain votes for the ruling party.”

Cuba maintains more than 24,000 doctors in Venezuela who were joined by another 2,000 who were forced to leave Brazil after Cuba decided to suspend its participation in that country’s Mais Medicos program, after the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the Brazilian presidency, a candidate not liked by Havana.

Since the publication of the report in Spanish and English, the Cuban official press has launched a propaganda campaign on the activities of doctors in third countries.

This Tuesday, the Communist Party owned newspaper Granma  ran an article with the title “The truth or the visa?: The New York Times lies against Cuba and Venezuela. The article insinuates that the doctors who participated in the New York Times report are seeking to emigrate to the United States, which was subsequently denied by some of the doctors.

According to the official press, The New York Times  was preparing the ground for the reactivation of the Cuban Medical Professional Parole, a special program that granted refuge to Cuban doctors who escaped from missions abroad. The program was repeated by President Barack Obama in 2017. Under this program more than 8,000 Cuban health professionals emigrated to the United States.

“The perverse report from The New York Times only shows the photos of two of the 16 supposed doctors who informed the journalist (one living now in Chile and one in Ecuador),” said Cubadebate, another news site run by the Cuban government.

This Tuesday Cubadebate dedicated a Facebook Live broadcast to supposedly explaining live “why the NYT lies.”

Another official newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) also published “a set of works” about “the real work” of Cuban doctors in Venezuela “as opposed to the media manipulation issued by the American newspaper The New York Times.

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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.

“Joy is Coming”: The “Happy” Campaign That Promoted a NO Vote to End a Dictatorship

The power of cheerful positivity to end a dictatorship.

Lyrics

Chile joy is coming
Chile joy is coming
Chile joy is coming

Because whatever I say, I am free to think
Because I feel it’s time to win freedom
As long as there are abuses, it is time to change
Because enough of misery, I will say no

Because the rainbow is born after the storm
Because I want my ways of thinking to flourish
Because without the dictatorship, joy will come
Because I think about the future, I’m going to say NO

We say no, with the force of my voice
We say no, I sing it without fear
We say no, all together to succeed
We say no, for life and for peace

Get over death, this is the opportunity
To overcome violence with the weapons of peace
Because I believe that my country needs dignity
For a Chile and for all, we say NO

We say no, with the force of my voice
We say no, I sing it without fear
We say no, all together to succeed
We say no, for life and for peace
We say NO

Chile joy is coming
Chile joy is coming
Chile joy is coming

Mainstream Avant-Garde Films In Latin America

Miguel Coyula

Miguel Coyula, Film Inquiry Magazine, 15 January 2019 —  What is considered Latin American art cinema today? Who defines the accepted hegemonic profiles of the films that receive funding and are shown all over at European film festivals? For the past 15 years or more, film institutions in the West, whose mission is discovering new artists with a different point of view, have developed a particular aesthetic favoring.

Strong intellectual opinions are not to be found in Latin-American films with observational narratives, minimalist mise-en-scène, natural lighting, no incidental music; with long shots of characters wandering a landscape where poverty and social and political issues might be implicit but not overtly developed. In general, this fashionable aesthetic usually favors the disappearance of manipulation by an auteur, contradicting the very nature of searching for a personal voice.

Third World Art Film

The result is that many of these films end up looking very much alike, dismantling the very concept of auteur cinema for which they were supposedly chosen. This new market of fashionable Latin American art cinema is becoming not unlike the bubble that plagued the visual arts, confirming the existence of two markets: commercial mainstream films and the emerging niche market of the “third world art film”. This market is designed for a somewhat-educated first world audience looking at Latin America as a sensorial landscape, rather than investing effort to learn its intricacies and contradictions.

The Project of the Century (2015) Source: Ammo Content

It even goes as far as suggesting changes to filmmakers in order to fit the mold. Let’s take some examples in Cuba. Cuban filmmaker Armando Capó´s script for Agosto received support from several institutions, both in Europe and the US, but several changes were requested to fit their conception of what the film should be. Capó complained that it was very difficult to maintain his vision under these circumstances.

Films with a fragmented narrative, strong use of montage, stylized lighting, upper middle-class characters, or strong intellectual opinions are immediately discarded, as if that aesthetic can only be the province of developed nations in the West.

And what are these first world audiences conditioned to expect from third world cinema? A distant window, peeking at another culture from the safety of high above. This is not too different from decorative art: nothing too uncomfortable for either the eyes or the mind to digest. The poverty of the working class is almost always seen through this condescending gaze; the characters suffer and yet rarely are aware of the forces that create their agony, and even less are they ready to confront those forces.

Outside of Pornomiseria

Cuban filmmaker Jorge Molina, whose work has been characterized by an extreme mixture of explicit sex, gore, science fiction and horror, can’t find any institutions willing to fund his films. Resultedly, he’s ended up in no man’s land since his work is deemed too extreme for both mainstream and arthouse tastes.

Ferozz: The Wild Red Riding hoos (2010). Source: One Eyed Films

The term “Pornomiseria” (misery-porn) has been criticized by many Latin American filmmakers and scholars. The term is a critique to filmmakers who abuse the underdevelopment and marginal settings in Latin-American films as an excuse to draw the attention of a foreign audience. Many filmmakers are even crafting their projects from the initial stages to fit this mold and get funding, while a few filmmakers use it as only as a selling point to later revert to their original concept once they obtain funding.

Carlos M. Quintela´s La Obra del Siglo is an example of a film that managed to escape the nature of its original conception. The minimalist story of three men, three generations, living in a small apartment building, gained an enhanced political context when the filmmaker discovered documentary footage of the Cienfuegos Nuclear Power Plant and subsequently relocated his story to this new setting, creating a hybrid of fiction and documentary. However, it is doubtful that the Huber Bals Fund, the institution that funded the original script, would have approved the increased complexity of the finished film.

This is another precedent on how important it is to divorce from written ideas. In today’s film world, I find that the most interesting projects are improved with the chemistry of improvised elements finding their way into the narratives. Of course, this makes it rather difficult when institutions require a detailed description on paper of what will be on screen.

Filmmakers And Film Festivals

It’s difficult today to find anything completely original. It’s the combination of influences which combined can create a true unique voice, but in an increasingly globalized world even some of these alternative films are rapidly labeled, and sales agencies jump in to make a business out of it, even if it’s just for a niche audience. The filmmakers then remain happy with the formula they concocted and very seldom venture into truly new territory.

Wolvesof the East (2017) Source: Alucho

In this world, the filmmaker has a much higher rate of success by befriending festival programmers and learning their tastes, sometimes valuing them more than artistic quality. Even festival awards are given because of pre-arranged benefits with sales agencies that act as distributors because they know the films are not commercial enough to release. These films remain available only to the academic world, since domestic distribution won’t make dividends for a sales agency. Needless to say, these films hardly even play in their native countries.

On top of that, submissions fee at international film festivals are almost a must. Only a very small number of films that have been programmed by many festivals have been submitted via the official submission channel. The rest are either recommended or the festival takes interest in contacting the filmmaker directly.  The submission fees of rejected films end up as a source of income to the festivals. In other words, rejected independent filmmakers end up funding festivals where they don’t participate.

Carlos M. Quintela´s latest film The Wolves from the East is a mature story about isolation and nostalgia. The film takes place fully in Japan with a Japanese protagonist. If Yasujirō Ozu had made this film, the press would revere it, but a Cuban filmmaker made it and that’s not what international audiences expect from him. So the film has fallen into a cultural and geographical limbo, which has made the film difficult to program at festivals.

Conclusion

Now, for my agitprop rant: I find the vast majority of supposed “art films” highly irritating, because the compromises become more and more detrimental to our truly exploring the medium. A few programmers and curators seem to be fixated on an aesthetic regardless of what an intelligent audience (devoid of snobbish classism) would be capable of enjoying. These people are as responsible as the Hollywood suits for delaying the evolution of cinema language.

An independent filmmaker must be independent not just in the way he or she obtains financing, but mostly in form and content.

About Miguel Coyula

Miguel Coyula is a Havana-based Cuban filmmaker, published author, and Guggenheim Fellow whose lauded work has been screened and awarded around the world. Most recently he produced a webseries and documentary feature (Nadie) on the late poet Rafael Alcides, the latter of which screened at MoMA and won Best Documentary at the Global Film Festival in Santo Domingo. Currently Coyula is working on his fourth feature, Corazon Azul (Blue Heart).

Original in English by the Author

 

Translating Cuba: 288+ Translators, 426 Cuban Writers

Cuentapropista (self-employment) Cuban-style 2008. Taken in a doorway in Havana. (MJ Porter)

8 January 2019: As of today, our records show that 288 translators (who have chosen to identify themselves; many have not) have translated 426 Cubans (a number which includes mostly individual names but also organizations/groups).

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE who has made and continues to make this project possible.

On 8 January 2008, one of the project founders, on her first and only trip to Cuba, was at the Havana Malecon for a rather desultory celebration of the 49th anniversary of the bearded ones’ entry to Havana: some fireworks and a rather small crowd dutifully shouting Viva! call-and-response style.

If anyone had suggested that 11 years later…

Posthumous Novel by Rafael Alcides, Against Death, Against Oblivion / Ramon Fernandez-Larrea

Rafael Alcides in a scene from the documentary “Nadie” (Nobody), by the filmmaker Miguel Coyula. (Courtesy)

Translated from* from El Nuevo Herald, Ramón Fernández-Larrea, 8 November 2018

When one receives a novel – written by a friend who is a poet, or by a friend who has been and is forever a great poet – with the title Contracastro, one could never imagine that it is a love story, and not a pamphlet of accusations against power, nor the political testament of a worthy man, with a vertical and honest position.

And if that novel is also the posthumous work of that poet friend, which is also like a last will, and also, a very old story that Rafael Alcides began to ruminate on in the convulsive first years of the 1960s, and which he spent his life writing and rewriting, the result is a kind of testament, because this novel could be, or is also, the novel of our lives.

On the cover of the print edition it is noted that Contracastro is “A novel written in reverse.” Why? I suspect that it has to do with what Alcides himself says in the public history of the book: “In this second version the old love story is supported with very slight additions. Not so the context, this time evoked from today by Tom, already an old man, in a mega-Miami where he has been among the city’s forgers… For that first version, consistent with my political views of the time, the novel was nothing more than the many other pamphleteering-style texts of the time, against capitalism and the bourgeoisie.” continue reading

And Rafael Alcides continues telling us that “because of its title it frightened the Casa de las Américas officials when they saw it appear in the Literary Contest of 1965,” where “The juror Mario Vargas Llosa, who nominated it for a Prize, managed to obtain an Honorary Mention.”

What changed then? The world changed, Alcides changed. The years passed and the luminous future never arrived on the coasts of the island. Fatigue and disappointment arrived. And the masks fell from those heroes who wanted us happy all the time. And then came the time to tell, openly, the rending of the protagonists’ journeys to nowhere, the many protagonists of the other major novel, the epic of a people who emigrate, of families that are torn apart and walk through these worlds, without being able to tell their loved ones in a letter, all the love they still have.

Contracastro, published today by Eriginal Ediciones, is an inquest into Cuban history after 1959, told in first person, but in two alternating times, but, always in the background, it is a passionate story of love, sex, disgust and illusions, especially of lost illusions that the protagonist is capable of shouting to the four winds: “Burn down the world if they want, I have you.”

Contracastro is that then and this now. They are Tom and Carla in a provincial Miami that has been filled with Cubans who expect life to change in the next sixty minutes so that they can return to their country. A country that has already been filled with Russians, Chinese, Americans, abandoned houses, streets that will be, from then on, only in a bloody memory.

“Even though here in Miami they hate the word revolution,” writes the author, “it is here, nevertheless, where the Revolution really is. The Revolution with capital letters. In Cuba, the Revolution has already passed and what there is is the complete opposite of the ideals of democracy, present since the Guáimaro Charter of 1869.” … And at the end of that statement made by Tom, the protagonist, thinking like Rafael Alcides, or Alcides himself stuck in the skin and blood of Tom, one can read: “So while we can not return to Cuba, I will continue to consider myself a man from Guáimaro, a follower of Agramonte, a soldier of Céspedes, that is, a revolutionary.”

Contracastro is, in short, the legacy of Rafael Alcides, a man who lived and died telling his truths in Cuba today, and that was uncomfortable for the authorities, because honesty, in times of disappointment, is, at the very least, suspicious. Here the poet leaves us this intense story of a love that was and was not. A testimony against death, against oblivion. And we must read with gratitude to its author, to discover who we have been or who we are now. To know which side of History we are on. Or, better, to check, with pain and bitterness, which side of this story is ours.

Rafael Alcides

Keys To Understanding An Emergency Tour By Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel

Díaz-Canel did not choose to visit closer or more lucrative markets, in part because he is not looking for contracts but rather alms. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Lima, 13 November 2018 — If it were not for the two stopovers, one in Paris and the other in London, which Miguel Díaz-Canel made during his first official foreign tour at the head of the Cuban government, the map of his trip would be reduced to a group of countries that share ideological similarities and that are, for the Plaza of the Revolution, old allies from lost political battles.

In “the world according to Diaz-Canel” there are only as few nations as fingers on a hand, Moscow is located a few kilometers from Havana, and both the Americas and Europe have disappeared from the map. It is a planet scuplted in the geology of authoritarianism and created at the will of all-powerful parties, a land where the fragile grass of democracy hardly grows.

During his journey through that reduced world, the 58-year-old engineer was officially received by leaders from five countries: Russia, China, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos. The trip generated abundant declarations of “total support and solidarity” between the rulers, several visits to mausoleums housing the remains of controversial leaders, and the signing of some trade and cooperation agreements.

This latter seems to be the core of so much hectic activity, because beyond the official rituals, the journey was marked by urgency and driven by the despair of a leader at the head of a bankrupt nation. It was a trip in search of patrons, a “pass of the hat,” to achieve an economic relief from the tense situation on the island.

The scope of the agreements reached in this tour and their impact on the economy will only be verified in the coming months, but according to the headlines in the official newspaper Granma, we can already read that the compañeros visited on the trip have not been very benevolent. There has been no lack of agreements or signatures for exchanges, but there have been few loans or donations after so many handshakes, beyond having obtained 60 investment projects and a loan of 50 million dollars to buy weapons.

With productivity in the toilet, foreign tourism that will fail to reach the 5 million promised visitors, and the default of investors lacking enthusiasm to buy a piece of the Cuban pie, Havana is experiencing an acute lack of liquidity that is deepening the daily problems. Nevertheless, despite this tense situation, Díaz-Canel did not opt to visit closer or more lucrative markets, in part because he is not looking for contracts, but rather alms.

In addition to help and donations, the trip aimed to reaffirm the concept of “continuity” that has become the cornerstone of Cuba’s rulers. To reassure those who, like Kim Jong-un, could fear that, with the help of a younger leader, Havana might undertake economic and political reforms that would allow it to strengthen ties with Washington, Brussels and other democratic governments.

To all of them the message was clear. Nothing moves in the politics of the Island without the consent of the Communist Party and the generational change is totally under control. With this mantra, late Castroism tries to renew the support provided by these five nations in international forums, following the crisis facing regional entities such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

A third reason to undertake this “path of complicity” has been to annoy the United States and to make it clear to the European Union that it is not a priority on the Cuban agenda. And, in passing, slam the door on Latin American administrations that believed that without a Castro in power dialogue with the island would be easier. By preferring not to travel through the countries of the area, Cuba’s government has shown its low regional spirit and its disdain for its

Now, once this tour of necessity and ideological myopia is over, it remains only to wait for the real benefits it will have in everyday life. The millions of dollars agreed upon in exchanges are just a drop in an ocean of needs and are unlikely to deter those who plan to escape the island. Those thousands of Cubans who each year set a course for countries not included in the small world preferred by Miguel Diaz-Canel.

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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.

Cuba’s Official Silence in the Khashoggi Case

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman (right), receives Salah bin Jamal Khashoggi (left), one of the sons of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, to personally convey his “condolences”. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 24 October 2018 — A journalist enters a consulate and never comes out again. All indications point to the fact that within those walls he was reduced to a pile of body parts that were destroyed to erase all the evidence. The assassination of Saudi Jamal Khashoggi, presumably ordered by the absolutist monarch of his country, has provoked a wave of indignation that has not yet arrived in Cuba.

Khashoggi, a deep connoisseur of power networks in Saudi Arabia and a contributor to The Washington Post, is one of the latest victims of the excesses by authoritarian governments to silence the press. The profession has taken on a new life and the journalist’s death has revealed how economic conveniences cause the few who dare to criticize Riyadh to do so quite tepidly.

In recent days there have been protests in front of Saudi consulates in various parts of the world, declarations of support from countless media, and diplomatic demands expressed to King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. However, from Havana not a single complaint has come through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nor has there been a statement from the official Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC). continue reading

In Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been emphatic in suspending arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the murder of the journalist, although analysts rationalize this firmness by the smaller volume of trade between Berlin and Riyadh. This Thursday, the European Parliament is also expected to hold a vote on a joint resolution of condemnation, the result of which is still unknown due to the fact that opinions on the issue remain divided within the bloc.

Washington, slower to respond, has announced that it will revoke the visas of those Saudi officials supposedly implicated in the reporter’s death and that it will also subsequently impose other punishments as the investigations progress.

In the midst of this clamor, the silence of the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, and of UPEC, becomes more apparent. The reasons for such caution are as mundane and pragmatic as are those of others.

In 2016, Cuba signed an agreement with the Saudi Development Fund for 80 million dollars to export products from the Arab country and to finance infrastructure in the Island’s deteriorated hydraulic sector. Later Cuba received another credit of more of 26 million dollars for the Rehabilitation and Construction of Social Works Program of the Office of the Historian of Havana.

Everything seems to indicate that the Cuban authorities do not want to offend, with their demands, one of the few pockets willing to continue putting money in the island.

Castroism has always been motivated more by economic interests than by ideological affinities, hence its closeness to the caudillo Francisco Franco, its exchanges with Videla’s military dictatorship in Argentina and its willingness to receive Israeli businessmen with open arms, although its propaganda attacks that country with a constant stream of expletives.

At the moment there is no group of official journalists protesting in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Havana, because money has prevailed over ideals and because the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a minor issue for a regime that, in exchange for investments, credits and donations, knows how to turn a blind eye.

For that reason, no guest will speak up for the silenced reporter on Cuban TV’s Roundtable program, no commentator on primetime news will point to the Saudi regime as responsible for his death, and in the Cuban foreign ministry no diplomat will be given the task of transmitting to the Arab monarchy a message of displeasure. For all of them, conveniences take priority over the death of a journalist who only wanted to do his job.

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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.